Hi, I'm Palipilino!
Nintendo Switch
4/3/2026
Octopath Traveller is not the worst game ever made. It's not the worst RPG, the worst Square Enix title, the worst game on the Switch, or the worst major AAA title that came out in 2018. A lot of people have found it to be very enjoyable. It has its fans, both those who appreciate it as a kind of "turn-your-brain-off" comfort game, where you stick around for the pretty visuals and the turn-based combat, and those who enjoy its characters and storylines. It inspired several successful sequels and brought about the HD-2D revolution. So what gives?
Humans, generally, try to avoid contemplating their own mortality. We all know what's coming, and we try to put it off as long as we can. Sure, we make jokes; we try to brush it off like it doesn't really bother us. Who knows, maybe it really doesn't bother most of us. It usually takes some kind of inciting incident to make us reconsider these things. You know the classics: a midlife crisis, or a medical diagnosis, or the death of a loved one. Harsh reminders that our time on this earth is limited. Usually helps to reframe things, though rarely to your immediate benefit.
Remember all those days you wasted? Remember thinking "I don't feel like doing anything today" or "I'm just looking to waste some time"? Waste some time; can you believe it? The single most precious resource we have. Think of what we could have done with all the time we wasted. It's easy to feel downtrodden about it. But it's okay! Because with your most recent reminder of how precious and fragile life can be...well, if you can get past this, you're going to make the most of it, right?
| Played For | 12h 33m |
|---|---|
| Completion Type | Chapter 1 All Characters |
| Fact | First abandoned game since 2024 |
Octopath Traveler is a 60-some-odd-hour game that struggled to justify even a quarter of its runtime. Its premise of eight vignettes that take place in the same land is compelling but ultimately wasted; the characters largely have nothing to do with each other outside of combat, and the game's pacing is torn to shreds every time a new character is introduced. By the time you meet all your travellers, you'll almost certainly have forgotten what any of their goals are to begin with. With such little time to shine, each narrative quickly melts into a mixing pot of generic, poorly written fantasy—forgettable at best and offensive at worst.
Perhaps Octopath Traveller could have been spared a few blushes by presenting each story individually; at least then the player might be able to retain a semblance of connection with one or two of them. But the current presentation is almost laughable. It's as if Square Enix knew the stories they were trying to tell were so lifeless, it would be better for the player to be as obfuscated from them as possible. The moderately decent but glacially paced battle system and the, admittedly, fantastic-looking environments and backgrounds are not worth trudging through.
60 hours. Gosh, what could you do with 60 hours? It's enough time to find a new passion in life, learn a new hobby, and start the foundations of learning a new language. Are these things all objectively a better use of your time than Octopath Traveller? Not necessarily; it all depends on what you want to do, of course. Who knows; maybe you're in a position where a good-looking, simplistic, long RPG would be a comfort to you. If that's the case, by all means, travel those octopaths.
It would be ridiculous to claim that the emotional state you are in while you experience a piece of art or media doesn't have a major effect on your overall enjoyment. So if you're feeling fine, maybe Octopath Traveller passed through you without incident. Perhaps this review seems needlessly callous. But this game doesn't value your time. Your time! That's all you have...that's all we have. If this was the last game you ever played...would you feel like it was a good one to go out on?
What the point of writing all this is, no one knows. Octopath Traveler is not uniquely terrible—it's vapid and uninspired, sure—but this review could have been written about hundreds, probably thousands, of games. This is just the one that happened to be in the crosshairs when the trigger was pulled. It's not fair, but who says life is fair? If it was, maybe we wouldn't have to worry about how much time we might or might not have left. Maybe we would be able to spend our time playing mediocre RPGs, content in the knowledge that there will always be more time to play better games later.
But not everyone has that luxury. Really, no one does. But no matter how much time you have left...this game is probably not worthy of filling any of it. Its greatest contribution to your life, indeed, might be the realization that helps you set it down for good. The realization that there's more to life than a weird obsession with finishing every game you start. You can move on now. Thank you, Octopath Traveller, for teaching us that. Let's play good games while we still can.